DfE to probe children’s homes workforce after Care Review publication

Will Quince made the announcement in a statement to the House of Commons, laying out the government's initial response to both the review and the findings of a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into the children’s social care market, which were published in March.

DfE previously said it would issue its response to the investigation following the publication of the Care Review's final recommendations.

He said: “I have asked my department to conduct thorough research into the children’s homes workforce, engaging with the sector and experts to improve oversight of the market.”

• Care Review turns attention to reforming care sector market

• Sector split over Care Review’s comments on residential care

Quince also shared his plans in a letter to Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA.

In its final report the CMA urged each UK government to commission an annual state of the sector review, which would “consider the extent and causes of any shortfalls in children’s home staff or foster carers”. 

“Recruiting and retaining staff for children’s homes is a significant barrier to the creation of new capacity,” it notes. 

Care Review chair Josh MacAlister backed the CMA’s year-long investigation, saying its findings would be used to shape his review’s recommendations.

In his final recommendations, published yesterday (23 May), MacAlister proposes the creation of regional commissioning co-operatives to “provide oversight to ensure quality and consistency across homes” alongside the recruitment of 9,000 new foster carers.

.@reviewCSC is an important first step in ensuring that every child has an equal chance to fulfil their potential.

It’s vital that we better support families and children with experiences of care. I will be saying more on the Government's response in Parliament later today. https://t.co/sBVwJqXAwn

— Will Quince MP 🇬🇧 (@willquince) May 23, 2022

It also puts forward proposals for a windfall tax on the children’s social care providers making the largest profits.

Responding to the review’s recommendations, a CMA spokesperson said: “Our study found that the system for children in care is failing some of those most in need and the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care has concluded the same. It is crucial that changes are made to ensure better oversight of larger providers’ financial stability and better support for councils to access homes for children.”

The recommendations have split opinion across the sector.

Andy Elvin, chief executive of Tact care, said: “To have a body with the one responsibility for commissioning for residential care and foster care, in my view, gives local authority greater freedom of choice and easier decision making about the best placement for a child.”

Steve Crocker, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services added that “further detail” is needed to “fully understand how some of the reforms would work in practice, such as regional care co-operatives”. 

“Careful trialling and evaluation may be needed before wider implementation of some aspects of the recommendations to ensure children’s best interests are not lost despite best intentions,” he said.

However, Peter Sandiford, chief executive of the Independent Children’s Homes Association, warned that “the review demonstrates MacAlister’s lack of knowledge about residential care for children and highlights the review’s failure to involve experts and representatives from this sector”. 

“The voice and experience of experts from highly specialised services, who care for children with the most complex needs in society, should have been central in this review. However, no representatives or experts from the residential children’s care sector were meaningfully involved in the review at any point. As a result, MacAlister failed to gain an understanding of vital issues, or learn from work being done to address these. An opportunity was sadly missed,” he said.

Responding to the review, Quince told MPs that he has “three main priorities” to enable government to “form a bold and ambitious response and implementation strategy to be published before the end of 2022”.

“The first is to improve the child protection system, so that it keeps children safe from harm as effectively as possible, the second is to support families to care for their children so they can have safe, loving and happy childhoods which set them up for fulfilling lives, and the third is to ensure that there are the right placements for children in the right places, so that those who cannot stay with their parents grow up in safe, stable and loving homes,” he said.